Grading Texas

As are other groups preparing for battle during next year’s legislative session, TSTA obviously is very interested in the outcome of what is becoming a nastierbytheday race for the House speakership. But all we can do is wait and watch as the suddenly inflated Republican majority – egged on by rightwing activists – fights its unholy war over who is the most conservative.

Believe me, folks, we are keeping a safe distance from this one. But as a native of Speaker Joe Straus’ hometown, San Antonio, I find the speaker’s defense of his Republican credentials more than a little ironic.

Growing up during the days of oneparty, Democratic Texas, I didn’t know there were any Republicans in San Antonio until I learned of two, both named Straus. They were the speaker’s parents. They were what everyone else called Country Club Republicans, fiscal conservatives, and they were Republicans when it was still very unpopular politically in Texas to be one.

This was years before the emergence of the social conservative, Libertarian variety of Republicans, the genre which now is questioning Joe Straus’ conservative, Republican credentials, his ideological purity.

In truth, Straus has longer partisan roots than most of his detractors, including challenger Warren Chisum, who was elected to the House for years as a Democrat before figuring it was politically safe to switch parties.

Straus also has been a Republican longer than Gov. Rick Perry, who also was elected to the House as a Democrat before switching parties to seek statewide office.

Straus may need more than his pedigree, though, to overcome his rabid critics.

The term may sound a little harsh, but it is difficult to disagree with New York Times’ columnist Nicholas D. Kristof’s assessment that the United States has become something akin to a “banana republic.” He doesn’t mean a country headed by a tinpot dictator, but a country in which a tiny percentage of superwealthy individuals (certainly not schoolteachers, or even bigcity superintendents) have gobbled up a hugely disproportionate share of the wealth.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now pocket almost 24 percent of the income in this country, a significant increase from the almost 9 percent they took home in 1976, Kristof noted in a recent column. The huge disparity, he said, now gives the U.S.A an arguably more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

The longterm implications for the financial – and political – health of such a country aren’t good.

I don’t have comparable figures for Texas, but our state’s tradition of low workingclass wages, high incidence of poverty, large numbers of residents without health care and high dropout rate certainly don’t improve upon the national trend. Moreover, the situation in Texas will worsen next year under the draconian budgetary cuts promised by Gov. Perry and his new, largerthanlife conservative majority in the Texas Legislature.

The wealthiest Texans, many of whom financed Perry’s recent reelection campaign, will be only minimally impacted by the upcoming spending cuts in public schools and other public programs. They don’t earn government or teacher paychecks, they can afford the best health care and they can afford private schools for their children.

Ironically, the teachers, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other government employees who will lose their jobs because the governor and Republican lawmakers would rather cut services then raise taxes pay a higher tax load, proportionately, than the wealthiest Texans.

A heavy reliance on sales and property taxes and lack of a personal income tax give Texas one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. A regressive tax system is one that hits the poor and middle class harder, proportionately, than the wealthy.

According to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, the poorest 20 percent of Texans, those with annual incomes of less than $18,000, paid 12.2 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2007, the most recent data available.

Those earning $18,000 to $31,000 paid 10.2 percent, and those earning $51,000 to $89,000 paid 7.2 percent. I am skipping some categories, but the higher the income level, the lower the percentage paid in state and local taxes.

The wealthiest 1 percent of Texans, those earning $463,000 or more per year, paid only 3 percent.

Just something else to think about as we contemplate the probable financial winners and losers from the upcoming legislative session.

Here is a link to Kristof’s column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=2

The twothirds rule in the Texas Senate may get its toughest workout yet next year, as Democrats try to stem an anticipated flood of bad legislation from a very conservative, very Republican House. But, first, the rule may have to survive a fight for its own survival.

For those of you who are uninitiated in the strange and mysterious ways of the Texas Legislature, the twothirds rule prohibits any bill from being considered on the Senate floor without the consent of twothirds of the members present. That means only 11 senators can block any piece of legislation.

Despite the huge Republican gains in the House, the Senate membership didn’t change on Election Day. Republicans kept their 1912 majority, but those 12 Democratic senators are enough to put up a stop sign.

No, the 12 Democrats aren’t going to stop the inevitability of a very conservative legislative session. But if they pick their targets carefully and have a little luck they may be able to have an impact on a handful of issues, such as how much of the Rainy Day Fund to spend in order to stem some of the budgetbleeding. They may even be able to block private school vouchers, if the House ideologues are shortsighted enough (and they may be) to waste what limited tax dollars we have on that bad idea.

At least one very conservative state senator, Dan Patrick of Houston, is worried enough about pieces of the rightwing express being shot down by the Senate minority that he is lobbying – once again – to either scrub the twothirds rule or replace it with a lower obstacle, such as a 60 percent requirement, which the Republicans have enough senators to cover.

It is important to note that the twothirds rule is not set out in the state constitution or laws. It is part of the Senate rules, which can be changed each session with the approval of only 16 senators, a simple majority.

During the years of Democratic dominance, senators loved the twothirds rule because it enhanced the political power of each senator. Many Republican senators came to like it as well, as Patrick discovered when, as a freshman senator in 2007, he proposed abolishing the rule and watched his proposal receive only one vote – his.

But the rule has been slowly cracking under the strain of increased partisanship. In 2003, Senate Republicans bypassed the rule to pass a partisan congressional redistricting plan. And, last session, they bypassed the rule to allow the Senate majority to pass a voter photo ID bill, which Democrats managed to kill in the House.

You can bet that House Democrats won’t kill a voter ID bill this session, and you can bet that Senate Republicans will bypass the twothirds rule to pass it again.

In an interview with KUT radio’s Ben Philpott, Patrick said he already has lined up six or seven votes to lower the twothirds rule to 60 percent for all legislation. Patrick can’t stand the prospect of the Senate – where he fancies himself a rightwing leader – “wasting” any part of this golden ideological opportunity.

The first day of prefiling bills for a legislative session is the statehouse version of turning the kids loose in a candy store, and lawmakers were true to their roles yesterday. Led by certifiably conservative Rep. Debbie Riddle, who camped out over the weekend outside the House chief clerk’s office to be first in line, Republicans filed a long list of proposed laws attacking immigration and abortion, promoting guns and voter ID and generally flexing their new electoral strength.

According to media reports, more than 300 bills already have been filed, and hundreds more will be filed before the session convenes on Jan. 11. Filing a bill, of course, is the easiest step in the legislative process. The real work won’t begin until committee hearings begin in earnest, probably in late January. But many of the conservative priorities will likely win approval, given the big increase in Republican strength in the House.

Most of the legislation that will affect the public schools is yet to come, although a few ideologically tinged bills were among yesterday’s prefilings.

House Bill 22 by Riddle would require school districts to report the number of “illegal aliens” in attendance, and House Bill 79 by Dan Flynn would remove any legal obstacles to posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

And, my thanks to Ed Sills of the Texas AFLCIO for pointing out one of the more imaginative (if that’s the right word) bills of the day. That would be House Bill 181 by Rep. Sid Miller to expand the August backtoschool sales tax holiday for school supplies and clothing to also include firearms and ammunition.

The four R’s of education: reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic and rifles.